We're only halfway through 2013, but it's unlikely that we'll see an odder cast than the one at the center of Brian Herzlinger's low-budget musical comedy How Sweet It Is. In fact, the movie is almost worth seeing solely so that, years from now, if you ever get asked the trivia question "What movie musical starred Joe Piscopo, Erika Christensen, Paul Sorvino and Eddie Griffin?" you'll be able to provide the answer, plus a plot synopsis and maybe a few bars of the title number, with complete authority.

I'll give Eli Roth this; having found a successful gimmick, he's not about to surrender it anytime soon. That particular gimmick can best be described as "Assholes abroad" -- an idea he tried out in the first Hostel and returns to again in Aftershock, the new horror film/disaster movie he co-wrote, produced and stars in, but didn't direct. Be grateful for small favors, I guess.

May's VOD offerings lead off with the corporate satire, Syrup, starring Amber Heard.

Only one movie in and Tom Cruise is already leaving the Jack Reacher franchise in his rearview.

Are you fed up with sparkly, sex-adverse vampires? So is Xan Cassavetes apparently, because her enjoyably sleazy new vampire drama Kiss of the Damned embraces the inherent carnality of these monsters (albeit in a primarily heternomative way) with an enthusiasm that thankfully has more in common with Interview with the Vampire than Twilight.

As media reporters rarely miss an opportunity to remind us, China is rapidly becoming the world's biggest market for entertainment. Amidst the Hollywood studios in particular, getting a movie onto the nation's carefully regulated screens represents the new box office Holy Grail. To try and grease the wheels in their favor, more and more big companies are striking co-production deals with Chinese media conglomerates as a way around the lengthy, laborious approval process. The documentary Unmade in China depicts another potential way for American filmmakers to tap into this market. Unable to find domestic funding for his thriller based on the infamous "lonelygirl 15" Internet scam, indie director Gil Kofman winds up finding an interested backer in China and agrees to direct a Chinese-language version of the film on location in Xiamen, despite having never visited the country before or speaking a single word of Mandarin or any other of the country's numerous dialects.

Over the course of building Phase 1 of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Marvel Studios developed a house style for their blockbuster comic book movies that included a bright color palette, a light tone (particularly compared to their Distinguished Competition's more somber wares like Chris Nolan's Batman trilogy and Bryan Singer's self-serious Superman) that made room for plenty of humor amidst the derring-do, villains with a lot of firepower (but not much menace) and straightforward stories that lobbed few curveballs at the audience. What's interesting about Iron Man 3, which kicks off Phase 2 of the MCU, is that it very deliberately goes about blowing up Marvel's house style... along with the house of its signature hero, Tony Stark -- played, as always, by Robert Downey Jr. That particular point isn't a spoiler, since it's been heavily featured in the movie's many trailers and teasers. However, in order to really get into why IM3 represents such a departure (at least for a little while) from the Marvel status quo, I'm going to have to get into more specific detail about what incoming writer/director Shane Black (taking over from franchise starter, Jon Favreau) has in store for Tony and his armored alter ego without, of course, giving the whole game away. So here's a Spoiler Warning for anyone who has an ironclad resolve to go into the theater without hints of any kind.

"So Jennifer... how much does an Oscar weigh, anyway?"

Serious question: When was the last time John Cusack smiled in a movie? Hot Tub Time Machine? High Fidelity? Grosse Point Blank? Hell, I wouldn't be surprised if the answer was as far back as One Crazy Summer. It's surprising -- not to mention more than a little sad -- how one of the most charismatic actors from my generation's formative moviegoing years has grown up to become a middle-aged grump who sleepwalks through lackluster thrillers with generic titles like The Raven, The Factory and, now, The Numbers Station. Cusack's glum visage immediately lays a wet blanket over Danish director Kasper Barfoed's English-language debut, scripted by former video game producer, F. Scott Frazier, and keeps it firmly in place until the final fade-out.

As improbable as it might sound, Pain & Gain is Michael Bay's attempt a Coen Brothers picture -- his Fargo or Burn After Reading if you will. Like both of those films (which rank amongst my own personal favorite Coen-made movies), Pain & Gain is a dark comedy about a group of very dumb, very greedy, very selfish and all-around not very nice people who apply their distinct lack of smarts and skills to crime and wind up failing spectacularly. But where the Coens were only kidding about Fargo being based on a true story, Pain & Gain's claims to legitimacy aren't manufactured. The crime dramatized here really did go down in Miami in the mid-'90s and while details have almost certainly been altered to fit Bay's glossy, hedonistic vision, Pain & Gain is, funnily enough, probably more historically accurate than the director's recreation of Pearl Harbor.